I would just say to a person who is being overbearing about their religion toward you, "You are as equal in your right to practice your religion as **insert belief system** has to practice or not practice their own."

The separation of Church and state is supposed to prevent a religious group from oppressing another religious group. Religious icons are not supposed to be present on public property since it would be considered promoting one religion over another.

I was at the train station in town, waiting on a bus to go to seattle. It was sunday morning, and a gentleman walked up from his car, asked if I had a minute to talk about jesus.

I said I'd rather not, but thank you. He walked back to his car and continued on to church.

Actually, the most awkward conversation I had was with a Mormon. My church was started by a group of mormons who didn't like where the church went after the founder was lynched. They stayed behind while the rest went to salt lake city. Mormons are very sheltered people, and it's hard to talk about the history of the mormon church, and the fact that they sort of excommunicated half of the senior priesthood that disagreed with them before deciding on literally having polygamy and baptism after death and the such.

but yeah, Mormons don't generally know much about the history of their own church.

I have no problem with people having something they believe in be it religion or anything else...but what i do hate is when they try to cram it down your throat or ambushing you.

One time i had just finished working the whole weekend and the next day (Monday) at around 8.30am i open the door to someone advertising Christianity to me. I was half asleep when it happened and didn't appreciate it in the slightest. Somehow kept my cool and said "No thank you i am not interested" and awkwardly closed the door on them.

It brings to mind the immigration issues in the UK over the last 20 years or so. Don't take this the wrong way because I have no problem with people coming over to live in the UK (so long as they do it legally), but what i do have a problem with is when they try to change it to suit their religious beliefs etc.

For example, a couple years back when some Islamic (or muslims, i am not sure which is preferred) people were complaining that the word "CHRISTMAS" was offensive to them because it had the word "CHRIST" in it and demanded we no longer call it by that name.

Yes, I was at work and called back to a number that called earlier. Long story short, this PH.D in religion of Christianity (or so he claimed) called me alot of rude things and said I'll go to hell.
He was SO rude. I was bound by company policies to reply to him any way which so ever that'll even provoke him, which shows you how rude he was to even start calling me that in the first place.

Oh yea, he said I was a liar because he didn't call or something. Whatever. No one gives a shit about your PH.D's and Doctorates if your behaviors as good as a baboon.

Best part about this rant was, like I said before, I had to listen to him -.-

I'm a military brat that settled down in the deep South. The buckle of the Bible Belt. There's always someone trying to save my soul. My favorites are the Jehovah's Witnesses. Clearly the Bible allows for 144,000 survivors of the apocalypse.....but there's millions of Jehovah's witnesses. Hmmmm. Math anyone?

Excuse me. please read below this line
(They believe that God's original purpose for the earth will be fulfilled; that the earth will be completely populated by worshipers of Jehovah and that these will be able to enjoy eternal life in human perfection; that even the dead will be raised to an opportunity to share in these blessings)

would you like to know more? yes or no?

While we were stationed in the islands my very Caucasian, Catholic, ass was quite well kicked for somehow being responsible for the pillaging of their faith several hundred years earlier. Never mind that I don't attend church, or share any groups tenets.

My idiot of a sister decided to turn away from Buddha and be a Christian ..
She's all jesus christ now and she talks to me about it and I'm like dude stop. I get pissed off at her.
I'm like "ok when mum and dad pass away ur not gunna enter the temple"?
cuz after she decided to switch her damn shit she says to my mum " I can't have 2 religion so I can't step foot in a temple"

Wut the fuck is wrong with her. -__-
Just to piss her off we had a lil debate about it. She talked about Jesus Christ and I threw Satan in there hahaha.
Fucking idiot.

I normally avoid religion and religious types, but if I see someone spouting beliefs and stuff I usually will start debating them until they either walk away, or start screaming at me because they are losing the argument.

I will get into religious conversations with different people just because I am an Atheist I don't knock religion one way or another Just because I don't believe everyone else should follow suit. I look at God as a grown ups version of an imaginary friend. Most talk out loud to him or her , ask him or her for things, play with the notion that he or she is watching them , just like a child's imaginary friend would. Whatever floats your boat then go with it.

._. I usually don't try to get sucked into the ignorance of religion, I only debate it when it encroaches on my scientific knowledge. For example someone got into it with me because they told me dinosaurs didn't exist, what the hell. ._. We have freaking fossils, they said they didn't exist because the Earth was only 6000 years old, which is also wrong because we have cultures that are much older than that. Ignorant Christianity only thinking their bs written in a book, that isn't even accurate and contains many conflicting ideals, is correct.

Happened to me too, I used to be catholic. Now I'm a realist, I only believe in what I see. So I guess you could say in also kind of an athiest. Anyhow my damn uncle (not by blood) comes over trying to spread his "doctrine", and I told him that's not the word of god! Some dude wrote that crap. I tried explaining to him how everything came from people trying to survive in ancient times growing crops and mapping the stars and movement of the sun so they can know when to plant seeds for the harvest. This asshe doesn't even listen to me and says its astrology, and I told him no, it's science! It's astronomy, you're confusing the two. He doesn't let me explain to him well so I called him an ignorant and said only stupid people are religious! He says yes, I am ignorant; and I told him that I could see it already! I also told him that religion is just the current fad like fashion and that in the next few hundred years everyone would just be worshiping something else so they can "fit in" with the current society. Anyways no one in my family really likes the guy and even wanted to kick his ass! I guess it's my turn to get added on to the list cuz one of these days I'm gonna have to beat his ass for reals!

Religious people piss me off! Especially how thy think thy are absolutely right and everything that contradicts them is the work of the devil. I always say we ourselves are the devils, man is his own enemy and the only thing religion has brought is separation of people and wars! I believe one day the smart scientific people will go to the stars, the true heaven, to find another earth. While all the religious fucks can burn in the war infested hell of their own creation here on earth...

Yeah, over here we have a crazy pro-life group called Youth defence (mainly men and old women, waste of time as abortion isn't legal here for any reason).

They go door to door occasionally and also have stalls on the streets and rallies.

Waving placards of dead foetuses in my face and trying to give me leaflets, trying to tell me how we are God's last safe haven against abortion in Europe and how we have to defend the country's Catholic stance and view. Bunch of old bigoted, rosary bead thumbing biddies.

Took all my self control not to start punching faces.

I'm glad you had self control, otherwise you might have wound up in jail, not a nice place to end up, for whatever reason.

even though I know how they feel, I don't condone their way of action, none of them have the right to force their views on you, If you refuse to accept one of their handbills, then they should just go to someone else, without hurtful comments or insults

tell us, where you live, Is it lawful to do what their doing without a permit to demonstrate in public?

Yeah, over here we have a crazy pro-life group called Youth defence (mainly men and old women, waste of time as abortion isn't legal here for any reason).

They go door to door occasionally and also have stalls on the streets and rallies.

Waving placards of dead foetuses in my face and trying to give me leaflets, trying to tell me how we are God's last safe haven against abortion in Europe and how we have to defend the country's Catholic stance and view. Bunch of old bigoted, rosary bead thumbing biddies.

Took all my self control not to start punching faces.

I'm glad you had self control, otherwise you might have wound up in jail, not a nice place to end up, for whatever reason.

even though I know how they feel, I don't condone their way of action, none of them have the right to force their views on you, If you refuse to accept one of their handbills, then they should just go to someone else, without hurtful comments or insults

tell us, where you live, Is it lawful to do what their doing without a permit to demonstrate in public?

I don't think it is lawful without a permit but I do think they have permits. They plastered the place in graphic posters that violated litter laws on numerous occasions but I'm not sure what came of that, I think they did end up being fined on one occasion round Christmas. Once the time limit is up you can tear down their posters. Their stands must be legal as I've never seen the gardai move them on.

They have also have public watchdogs investigating their dodgy funding (most of it comes from American donors, not Irish despite the whole 'Ireland's biggest pro life group' spiel ) but because they are classed as a charity, there isn't a lot that can be done.